The Random Atrocity
by Z3raphim
Summary: Taking place near the end of Hit By Destiny, the Creature from Elsewhere descends upon the sleepy towns of Forks and La Push to put a violent end to the group that has been antagonizing Bella and Edward these long and painful few months.
1. Prologue

This was written a couple of months ago as a tribute to the incredible **OCDMess** and her twific, _Hit By Destiny_. I enjoyed her tale a lot and I'm glad to see the end and the resolution as well as been given the opportunity to come along for the ride. I followed the story for most of a year and enjoyed it the entire time.

This story was written in the spirit of the uncountable times throughout story-telling history where I have seen protagonists harassed by a force or group unassailable by the means available to them. Well...I happen to know a character well-suited to putting a stop to things like that who doesn't shy away from doing things some would consider...morally reprehensible. So...if you've ever watched the underdog get crapped on and wished someone would swoop in and end it for them, this might be a story you'll enjoy.

I debated making this into chapters, posted it as a one-shot, then changed it to chapters on a friend's suggestion. So...yeah. Also, I played with rapid POV changes a bit so I hope suddenly switching perspectives isn't _too_ jarring for you.

A note on one of the songs mentioned in the story. Psycroptic's "Initiate" from Chapter 5 felt uniquely appropriate to the subject matter contained within _Hit By Destiny_ and so found its way into the story. If interested in listening...

www[dot]youtube[dot]com/watch?v=aO76RzDZb2Q

Lyrics can be found at www[dot]darklyrics[dot]com

The other song, Hollywood Undead's "City", inspired the closing scene in Epilogue.

Final note & warning: I intentionally and conspicuously left the plot thread involved Charlie Swan unresolved. This is an "alternate ending" type climax event for _Hit By Destiny_ and I sort of wanted to leave the actual closing of the story to OCDMess' tale. Also, there is contained within some _extremely_ graphic depictions of violence and death, some centered around teenage kids. If that offends or disturbs you...well...this **is** the warning.

* * *

**The Random Atrocity**

Light-bars atop police cruisers strobe and flash, a discomfiting sight even in the bright afternoon sun to the people milling around the park the cops had locked down. The decals on the sides of the cars said _Forks Police Department_ and, as such, there were only a few cars in total.

The cops themselves were standing near a young man with bronze colored hair, head in his hands.

They seemed excited; he seemed defeated.

A man watches from across the park, idly smoking a cigarette with gloved fingers. Bright blue eyes glitter keenly beneath the shadows of the black hoodie he wears. He seems very intent on the attempt at law enforcement and, more precisely, the young man so downtrodden.

He smokes down the cancer-stick as he watches a young couple arrive to apparently give a witness report. They were both teenagers, near to the same age as the young man. A too-skinny blonde female draped all over a goofy-looking jock male.

The boy gives a bumbling greeting to a female cop, the only one who looked like she had a clue, and the couple is led away. The hooded stranger's inhuman hearing picks out the conversation from across the park and he stands, grinding the smoke under the heel of a black boot.

He already knew the young girl Bella Swan had been kidnapped; he wanted to know how far ahead of the cops he was to finding her.

He already _knew _where she was. Or rather, where she was going.

He figured he had plenty of time.

Casting one last look at the downtrodden boy with bronze hair, the stranger in black turns and walks away, eerily silent on booted feet.

It was time to go retrieve the package.


	2. Chapter 1

The hooded stranger drops lightly into a tree on the far side of the La Push Native American Reservation, looking out at the Pacific Ocean below as it crashes into the cliffs below. Snapping his hood back, white hair gleams in the cold afternoon sun and his breath puffs white in the chill.

White-blue eyes explode into a brilliant glow as Zeraphim surveys the forest below.

Pulling the gloves off of his hands, he stretches long, powerful fingers with tips that glow a faint purple-blue. Z pockets the gloves and sits on the branch. Waving his booted feet beneath him, his eyes flash brightly.

The boots vanish in a shower of blue sparks.

Springing upward to his now bare feet, he scampers along the branch lightly and leaps off.

Sailing through the air, he slaps into the trunk of another of the massive trees native to the area and bounds off again. Striking another tree, he repeats the process. Effectively covering massive distance _very_ quickly, he travels through the forest to a rough dirt track running alongside the cliffs. Slamming into the side of another tree, he stops, stuck there like a bug to the massive trunk.

Slinking around the tree on all fours, he crawls out on a limb over the track and waits.

XXXXXX

_Shit, she caught me. I'm dead_.

Fighting back tears, that line was all that kept repeating in Bella Swan's head. That, and how upset Edward was going to be that she'd thrown up all the cotton candy.

Although, that seemed rather secondary.

He was going to be _pissed_ when he couldn't find his Sparrow.

Deciding finally that tears are _really_ counterproductive, Bella sits up to take stock of her surroundings. Wincing against her cast and bound wrists, she drags her legs up onto the backseat of the little blue Honda she was locked in. Looking out the window, she saw the thickening forest outside of town and glanced at her driver. A kid, no more than 17 or 18 and sweating bullets, was white-knuckle on the steering wheel. Driving like he was in a Hollywood-style car chase. Bella leans over to the side to try and see if she can figure out who it is.

The kid seems to twitch as he notices her looking at him and turns his face sharply away. The car swerves just a hair and Bella decides on not doing that again.

Car accidents had this annoying way of not _always_ being fatal.

Glancing at her cast, she rolls her eyes.

_Yeah, you would know. You really are a masochist._

Arching an eyebrow at her own thoughts, Bella ducks her head about and looks out the window. She was hoping Edward was okay and wasn't tearing apart Forks already trying to find her or anyone who knew where she was.

Lost in thought, Bella drifts listlessly in the backseat simply waiting for whatever came next.

Suddenly, the car starts slowing and she furrows her brow, looking out the windows again. A tiny gas station about 15 miles out of town came into view around the next bend in the road. The driver whips the little blue Honda through a screeching turn into the parking lot. The car tears across the asphalt, around the side of the station, and pulls up next to an empty old Toyota 4x4 pickup. The kid cuts the motor, shoves the door open, jumps out, slams it hard, and takes off around the corner to vanish inside the store.

Bella, wide-eyed, just stares after him.

_What now?_

Two of the older guys from the Rez appear from behind the gas station striding quickly toward the car. Each held black cloth in their hands. Bella starts fumbling with the locks on her door, trying to keep them out.

Too little, too late.

The passenger door is yanked open and she's pulled by both legs violently from the vehicle. She lets out a short scream at the shooting agony burning its way up from her cast. A wad of black cloth is shoved into her open mouth and tied in place by skilled hands. A black hood is cast over her face, sending everything into inky darkness, and she's hefted like a sack of potatoes, carried away.

The door of a vehicle opens and she's tossed roughly into the passenger seat of the truck she was sitting next to. She could smell that telltale scent of old leather and engine gunk from unwashed tools. She's strapped tightly into the seat by the seatbelt and her bound hands wedged beneath it, her cast shoved roughly into the floorboard.

They didn't seem to give a rat's ass about her leg.

The door slams and all is silence and darkness for a moment.

A driver hops in and cranks the truck quickly, the old 6 cylinder roaring to life. Gears crunch and the 4 tires kick up dirt as the truck rockets around the back of the gas station, turning sharply. Bella feels the back end of the truck sliding in the mud and it suddenly dawns on her why they'd switched vehicles.

They needed her at La Push for whatever they were going to do and they knew the police would be watching the Rez what with the all the crap going on with Renee.

But the police would be watching the _roads_ into La Push.

They were in a 4x4; they didn't _need_ roads.

Sighing softly in her hood, Bella slumps against the seat and consigns herself to wait patiently for death or torture.

_Or whatever the hell Renee is going to do to me_.

She hears the tires hit black-top and knows she's got a good hour's worth of riding to do before they even get to the Rez from this crappy little gas station. Then it was no telling how long they'd be driving through the woods to get wherever the hell they were going.

Slumping even further down into the seat, Bella's head falls to the side, facing the faint sunlight lancing through her hood.

_I wish I had my Edward._

XXXXXX

About an hour and 30 minutes later, Zeraphim lay draped over the branch he'd perched on earlier. His eyes were closed and he looked for all the world like he was taking a catnap. His body, in fact, was doing just that.

His mind was elsewhere though.

His consciousness had departed shortly after he went to his perch. He'd traveled, manifest as the wind itself, over the small town of Forks and watched for the little blue Honda with the girl inside. It hadn't taken long to spot them. Her panicked energy was radiating out of the car as intense to his god-senses as staring too long into the sun or the screaming of the condemned.

Floating on the thermals a couple thousand feet above the world, he followed Bella Swan's fear out of town and watched the entire episode at the gas station. The elder teen that left with the younger boy in the blue Honda had extended his lease on life by parting ways with his older friend.

But only for a few hours.

As Bella drifted into a deep depression sitting in the passenger seat, Z had dropped his consciousness to the bed of the pickup and gone along for the ride. But he had a much deeper purpose. The back windshield was no impediment to his thought-being at all.

He'd entered both their minds like a breath across the back of the neck.

Bella, he'd gently coerced her mind into sleep.

She was in for quite a shock very soon and she'd need the rest.

The boy he simply made sure turned off-road at the right time, heading down the track he'd found earlier in the day and decided was a nice quiet place to conduct a re-kidnapping. As the kid rocketed down the mud path, Z waited til he saw his perch and his napping body to leave the pickup.

The eyes on the body snap open, exploding into white-blue brilliance.

Z focuses sharply on the pickup as it approaches. A compulsion is sent at the mind he'd so recently left. A simple mental block; one that merely obscured the white-haired monster from the driver's sight. The boy never falters as he barrels down the dirt track.

The truck passes into the tree-line and into a narrow corridor, the trees a blur of green and brown as they whip by.

Corridors make such wonderful places for ambushes.

As the pickup nears Z's tree-limb, the astral being abruptly springs to his feet and leaps out into the void over the mud track. The pickup passes beneath Z just as his leap was turning into a dive.

The astral being's eyes flare blindingly and he slams into the ground with a dull _boom_.

Razorblades, an inch long at the tip of all 10 fingers and glittering purple-blue in the sun, shear through the front of the truck like it isn't even there. The sudden stop and the downward force toss the pickup airborne up and over Zeraphim's crouching form, his gaze following it overhead.

White-blue eyes flash again and he vanishes.


	3. Chapter 2

Inside the cab, Bella woke screaming along with the boy in the driver's seat.

_FUCK! AGAIN? What is with my fucking luck and cars?_

She couldn't see much and what she could feel was weird as hell. She was pretty sure the truck was in the air. Upside-down and spinning.

_**That**__ can't be good._

Suddenly, there are hands on her shoulders with an _insane_ grip. It didn't hurt but struggling was so pointless against hands _that _solid. A whisper crawls across her synapses, which was a patently _weird_ sensation to say the least.

"_This is going to feel strange."_

Bella's eyes go wide behind the hood as the already topsy-turvy world spins out and goes even crazier. Her only points of reference were the hands on her shoulders and 2 _really bright_ eyes staring into hers through the hood.

Everything else was even more insane. The daylight filtering into her hood changes color, shifting through an entire rainbow of shades in the time it took her to draw breath. She might as well have not even have had an equilibrium for all the good it was doing her.

Everything felt like up and down at the same damn time.

The scent of rain hits her nostrils and she feels, as well as hears, a faint sheen of water brush against the skin of her arms and face.

But it felt like the rain came from every direction at the same time.

_This doesn't even make sense!_

Suddenly, everything rights itself and she's set lightly on her feet. Adrenaline had washed her senses the moment she'd woken in the truck, giving her the strength she needed to manage standing awkwardly on her cast, blind and unable to speak as the hands leave her shoulders.

_BOOM._

The truck slams into the ground in front of her, shaking the ground beneath her feet. Cringing involuntarily, she ducks her face against the onrushing wind off the impact. She waits for a moment for the explosion she was expecting, wondering ironically if she was _actually_ going to die in this car accident.

Then one of the strangest things she'd ever felt happens.

The hood and gag melt.

Or something like that.

Looking down at the black cloth as it began to drip down her body, her eyes go wide as fabric impossibly turns liquid and then seems to shift again into gas….or shadow? Her eyes didn't quite know what to make of the complete insanity they were seeing. The black cloth that so recently had her blind and mute turns into living, moving shadow and slithers into the all the normal places shadow _should_ be, freeing her hands as well.

Blinking to clear her vision, she looks back up for the glowing eyes she'd seen a moment ago.

_Man, am I losing it or what? How is that even possible!_

Before her was a scene from a dream. Although, not necessarily a good one.

Frozen in the act of slamming into the ground, the pickup was upside-down and facing the way they'd come. The boy inside was still alive, the cab of the truck a little less than a foot from the ground, but just as frozen in place as the rest of the vehicle. Bits of metal from the truck were halted in mid-air, flying away from the impact.

Standing in front of it was something that looked like a man but _definitely not_ human.

His skin was so pale, it was almost too bright to look at in the sunlight. His eyes glow and pulse with white-blue brilliance and his long, straight white hair fell down in front of a too-perfect face. He'd have been more attractive to her if he didn't seem so _crafted_ to be that way.

The whisper slides across her mind again, making her eyes go wide.

"_That's actually intentional. I don't __**want**__ to be attractive to you."_

Bella quirks a brow as her mind is read and responded to without her ever even phrasing a thought. Her head tilts and she works her mouth a moment, trying to find words.

The whisper comes again.

"_Time is paused. Hence the mess behind me. I had to make sure you were steady on your feet before I finish up here. Oh, and living shadows are actually rather common around me."_

Bella finally manages a question.

"What the _fuck_ are you!"

The white-haired creature in front of her laughs with this deep, rich baritone and flashes this bright grin that would have been goofy if he didn't have fangs. Like, no shit, glittering k9 fangs. He finally speaks vocally to her.

"All in due time, Miss Swan. I have business to tie up here. Meet my cat. He'll get you more acquainted with that living shadow thing I mentioned."

With that, he turns away and leaps atop the time-paused truck, perching on the edge of the rear-bumper. Purple-blue tracers shear the air as the razorblades on the ends of his fingers slam into the metal, steel crunching together as he grips the pickup.

The whisper slithers across her mind again.

"_You might want to sit down. When I release time, the adrenaline that is keeping you on your feet will dissipate almost instantly."_

Bella blinks and does as he suggests, figuring he probably knows what he's talking about.

Suddenly, all the sounds of the forest that she hadn't noticed were missing begin and fill a silence suddenly broken as the truck crunches into the ground. The scream that starts is cut off almost before it begins, the driver crushed near-instantly.

Bella winces at the gruesome sound and turns her face away. A sudden rush of wind and a dull _boom_ makes her look upward.

The stranger was flying up and out of the trees, a mangled truck in hand. It was about half the length of its original size, the bloody cab completely crushed in. Z spirals off toward the ocean and darts out of sight, _CRACK,_ like a gunshot echoing through the forest as he takes looks at the ground where the truck had landed, looks for the blood she knew was there.

She wondered if he'd left her alone on purpose to deal with what just happened.

After all, she knew she _should_ feel bad for the kid that had just died a rather unpleasant death. As evidenced by the red mud she was staring at. But…with everything that had happened in the last couple of months and where the guy was taking her…

Bella _didn't _care. And she wasn't too sure if that bothered her or not.

_Am I really that callous?_

Her thoughts are broken by yet another strange sound; a meow.

But no cat she'd ever heard in her life sounded like this one. It was a weird, otherworldly echo of a meow. It almost sounded like it came from the forest itself but Bella spun and looked around anyway.

Trotting down the path toward her was the source of the sound. Black silken fur shifts between solid and shadow as the feline-shaped creature pads down the track toward her. Two luminescent purple eyes with no pupils lock with hers. Bella is almost taken aback by what she sees there.

There was a dark and powerful intelligence lurking within the gaze of the little cat-thing.

It pads up to her and sits down, peering up at her with those shimmering purple eyes. Its form appears solid and air-thin all at the same time. Bella blinks her eyes to make them stop twitching as they tried to focus on the weirdly shifting shadowcat.

"Um…" she pauses and bites her lip, furrowing one side of her brow and chuckling softly. "You are his cat, I guess?"

The eyes glitter and the cat dips its head in a nod.

Bella laughs a little, "Oookay. So uh…what's your name?" Her nose crinkles as she says it, feeling silly for asking a cat its name.

The cat dips its head again and hops to its feet. Scampering past her, it heads over to the small patch of blood-soaked mud. Bella winces as she shifts around, leg on fire. Just as she gets turned about, the little shadowcat flicks out a paw tipped by claws that only seem made of a thin, ethereal light. It dips the claws in the blood-muck and scampers back over to her.

Rearing up on its hind legs, it slashes a name in the air in front of her. Liquid red traceries glowing with the light of the creature's claws hover in the air between them.

_Tien_

Bella's face goes through a few things. Confusion, awe, confusion, then complete amusement.

"Ok. So you're Tien. Um…what now?"

Before the cat can respond, the forest stillness is shattered by a dull _boom_ off toward the cliffs. They both glance off toward the sound and she looks back at the shadowcat.

"What was that? I know you know."

The cat meows at her.

Bella blinks and tilts her head.

"What?"

The little feline stands and meows at her again.

Bella laughs, "Wait…you can understand me just fine but can't really talk to me? Without…drawing it in the air?"

The cat dips its head again then pads over to her cast, sniffing at it. Bella furrows her brow as it zeroes in on the drawing _her boy_ had put there.

"What are you doing?"

The two bright purple eyes blink at her and the cat mews again before padding up and _onto_ her cast. She stiffens but her curiosity quickly quells her fear; the creature weighed _nothing_. It was like it wasn't even there. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised that living shadow doesn't weigh anything but it was still way weird.

"May I help you?" she asks with a quirky smile.

The little shadowkitty mews at her and shakes its head _No_. Then it drops its face and licks her jean-covered leg at the top of the cast, its tongue the same purple luminescence of the creature's eyes.

Something weird happens.

Cool, soothing waves slither up her leg from where the cat licks at her. Her pain washed away and the ache in her leg subsided to _almost_ gone. Bella gasps as a pain she was used to goes away. The cat stops and looks up at her, mewing softly.

Bella looks at the cat, her face awed.

"Did you _heal_ my leg?"

The shadowcat's face drops and it mews again, the echoing sound distinctly melancholy. It shakes its head _No_ again.

She reaches a timid hand out, "It's ok. Thank you anyway. It's much better, whatever you did."

Tien's eyes seem to flash like his master's and it nuzzles her proffered hand.

As Bella stretches her fingers to pet the shadowkitty, it surprises her.

Slinking forward wicked-fast, it slithers up and along her arm to her shoulder and buries its face in her hair. She laughs and leans forward, arching her neck as the critter sniffs around in her hair. It tickled and she was trying not to fall over, giggling the whole time.

After a few moments of playing with the cat, the whispering voice slinks into her mind again.

But it was _far_ different now; a myriad million voices whisper all at once, yet never in unison, and a deep, guttural, and ethereal growling give the words weight.

"_You two seem to be getting on just fine."_

The intensity of the voice in her mind was far stronger than before and caused her to look up at where the growling seemed to come from.

Perched on a branch over the track, the white haired stranger. Still bare-foot, still dressed in black, eyes still glowing. Only difference was his claws and fangs were missing. His strange eyes narrow at her and she starts to ask a question.

He cuts her off by standing up abruptly on the branch.

The white-haired stranger just falls backward. Lazily twisting through the air, he turns a slow back-flip and lands in a silent crouch. Standing and padding over to her quietly, he offers her a hand with glowing fingertips.

The single whisper returns.

"_Come on. Your day isn't quite over yet. We've a short trip to make."_

Bella arches a brow at him and shakes her head, hand halfway to his.

"You still haven't told me your name and you are already taking me places?"

The strange glimmering eyes seem to roll at her and he just leans down, taking her hand and lifting her to her feet like she weighed absolutely nothing. His rich baritone rolls across her ears.

"We have to go stop your boyfriend from doing something stupid tonight. I'll be the one doing the stupid shit this evening, thank you very much."

Bella withdraws her hand from his and looks up at him.

"So…how are we going to do that?"

He'd started to turn away but stops to peer at her sidelong.

"By using you as bait, _duh._" The last is said with a crooked grin.

Before she could ask him anything else, he turns away from her and pads over to the puddle of blood-muck. Thrusting both hands downward at the ground, two barely visible waves of thin blue energy warp down into the mud and turn it a blinding white, the sudden light forcing Bella to squint against it.

Tien slinks around her feet, distracting her for just a moment. It was just as well. What she saw when she looked up made less sense than anything else had today.

Lines of brilliant light streak out from the patch of mud the stranger stood over, coursing along the ground and up the sides of the trees. Into the underbrush and up each little bush. They branch out into the leaves of all the greenery in the forest around her, setting her entire world ablaze with glittering white light.

Suddenly, everything crumbles away.

The entire forest around her literally comes to pieces, decaying and spiderwebbing with cracks. The sunlight above rapidly fills in the gaps as the material world withers away. Even the ground she stands on shatters like slate and falls to nothing, leaving her standing in a blank sunlight-filled void with the white-haired stranger and his cat.

Bella waits for a couple of heartbeats, the sound thrumming the strange invisible walls of the empty light they floated in. The sound of an anxious young girl's strong heart eerily thumps their tiny spaceless world.

Before she could open her mouth to ask a question, her voice shakes the light-walls around them.

_Where the hell are we?_

Bella goes wide-eyed as her thoughts spoke _for_ her mouth.

The stranger turns to her, his eyes narrowing and seeming dim against the glare of the sunlight they stood within. The whispering millions of his voice ripple smoothly from the invisible walls.

"_The space between spaces. It looks far different to me than it does to you. Your mind, as it is, isn't quite equipped to handle all of the things your senses are trying to take in right now."_

Her anxious, excited mind speaks before her mouth can get to it again.

_The space between spaces? What the hell does that mean?_

He grins and his laughter causes the light they float in to flicker.

"_Extra-dimensional space. Meaning…I could sit here with you for the next hundred years to explain it and no time at all would have passed when I sent you back home."_

Bella responds with a quirked brow and an intentionally phrased thought.

_Uh, yeah…can we not do that and pretend we did?_

As the stranger spins away from her in the void, his laughter shimmers the walls again.

"_That was the plan."_

A young girl's laughter rattles the walls, her amusement resonating harder and sharper than the white-haired stranger's. Bella tries to hide her smirk with a hand but catches the shimmering white-blue eye the man had cast over his shoulder at her. Knows he's laughing too and hopes he can't see how red in the face she is.

Those curiously glowing fingertips draw a couple of intricate patterns in the bright emptiness, purple-blue tracers leaving lines in the sunlit nothing.

A nothing that is suddenly _not_ anymore.

Lines, the hard black lines of reality and order, jump out of the formless walls and begin rapidly shaping themselves into predictable geometric shapes. Bella starts making out cubes and rectangles. The more she becomes able to make sense of the basic shapes, the faster the image begins to come together in her eyes. Tien jumps into the scene, its form shattering into a mist and seeping into the darkening lines, giving the room's edges shadow and definition. As soon as she realized that the big rectangle lying on its side in the center of the room was a bed...well, suddenly the rest of the room made sense now.

Bella takes in a full, deep breath and smiles as bright as she had all day.

She was in Edward's bedroom.

The white-haired stranger stood at the sliding door out to the balcony, peering intently outward, the glow of his eyes bouncing off the glass and lighting up the room. Bella hops awkwardly over to the bed and flops down on it, sucking in a huge draught of _her boyfriend_ from the smell of him on the sheets. She lay there, happy as ever for just a moment, and then sits up abruptly, ignoring the ache that was slowly returning to her leg.

"So…Mister…we're baiting him to come back by putting me in his bed, is that it?"

The stranger just turns an impish grin at her and answers vocally.

"Of course. Who'd say no to that?"

Bella just laughs and grins back, "Good trap, sir."

The stranger turns to face her and swings one arm out in a playful bow.

"Thank you. Tricks & traps are but a few of the things I do _exceptionally_ well."

Bella goes wide-eyed for a moment. In her head…

_Did he really just say that?_

But what she said was, "Wow! How _old_ are you?"

He laughs and pads silently over to the couch and hops atop the arm, perching there on his toes. His fingers steeple in front of his face and the glow of his eyes dims abruptly and completely, two very bright, glittering blue eyes showing through the dying light.

Bella furrows a brow because the change that subtle gesture had affected was dramatic.

With "human" eyes, the hair seems less starkly white and his skin almost darkens to a tan. His features soften just a hair. Even his posture changes a bit; he didn't look like a predator anymore.

All in all, he looked much more…_normal_ to Bella. Her mind yells at her.

_Another trick! He looks human so I feel more comfortable sitting and bullshitting with him. Wow, living with this guy day to day would be maddeningly confusing._

He smiles, bereft of the fangs from before.

"Something like 15 billion years. It's been a long time. I mean…who'd really count after the first ten thousand years? Or worse, the first _million_?"

Bella laughs a little and wrinkles her brow again, almost taken aback at how nonchalant he is about it. She knows he can hear her thinking. "You just seem like a young guy. Playful, ya know?"

He laughs again.

"Well, yeah. I mean…15 billion years is a _long_ time! Ya gotta find something to laugh about. Besides, would you _really_ have been so calm about all this if I had been a dick about it?" He laughs again as he finishes and flashes a legitimate smile at her, eyes twinkling.

Bella laughs too and shakes her head at him.

"Ok then…so…what now?"

The stranger didn't seem to have heard her though. His eyes were focused on the door. His nose twitches once or twice like he'd just smelled something tasty. He definitely had the predator-thing going again, if not as intense this time. Bella almost opens her mouth to speak but decides to try something else.

_Hey! What is it?_

His head twitches to the side and a half-smirk crosses his face as he glances at her. The whisper slinks through her synapses again.

"_Well, aren't you a quick study."_

Bella half-scowls at him and flips him off.

A breath later, an image of her flipping him off…from his eyes…flashes through her mind. She twitches and blinks, then goes wide-eyed at him.

_Neat trick. You really weren't lying when you said you see the world differently than I do. A lot of colors. Colors I've never even seen before. Now…what is it? What's got you looking like you're about to go eat someone?_

He just smiles at her and his whispering voice dances with the neurons in her head.

_"You should probably prepare yourself. I believe Carlisle heard us talking and laughing. He's checking his phone for messages from Edward. I get the impression he's been trying to call his son for awhile now. Needless to say, voices from the room he wants his boy in right now would be rather disconcerting. He'll be coming up the stairs in a moment."_

Bella sits for a moment as he lays it all on her and blinks once or twice.

_You know all that from sitting there and sniffing the air for 30 seconds?_

The look he answered with is all she needs. His face screamed _Oh, if you only knew…_

Bella suddenly wished she could read his damn thoughts back and starts to sit up. Moving too quickly, she jars her leg against the end of the bed and gasps. The glittering blue eyes of the stranger flick to her leg and he drops to his feet, across the room in a blink. Bella starts, wide-eyed, and tries instinctively to back away from a fast-moving predator.

One of his pale hands clamps down on the cast. Bella squeezes her eyes shut in anticipation of the agony. Instead of flaring pain, she finds herself instantly and completely immobilized by his insane grip. A cool, numbing sensation floods the slowly-healing bone in her leg, radiating out from his fingers.

Suddenly, white-hot, so hot it's cold. The bone itself!

She screams in her mind, unable to do anything else and knowing he can hear her.

_NO! What are you doing? That's so intense!_

He never responds. The grip never lessens. The shocking cold wrapping the bone in her leg was so painful but at the same time…it was something she had no problem dealing with. She starts to wonder why he'd gone to all this trouble just to fuck with her in the end.

The cold abruptly increases a thousand fold and Bella screams in her mind.

She could _feel _the bone stitching itself together. Almost like it was freezing back together.

As jarringly as it began, it stops.

He stands and lifts his hand from her cast, stepping back and shoving both hands in his pockets. Bella takes a deep breath as she is released, able to move freely again. She gasps and pulls her leg up to her chest, regardless of the cast.

Before she can form a coherent thought, the whispering voice drops back into her mind again.

_"You gonna miss that thing?"_

Bella looks up and wipes a tear away that she was surprised hadn't come already. She looks at him for a minute. Fingernails drum on her cast gently and she bites her lip nervously as she chews over everything this enigmatic creature had done for her in the last 2 hours or so. And then tops it all off with a joke about her cast.

Finally, she looks up and laughs a little.

"Maybe just a little. Did you…._really_ just heal my leg? Like…it's not broken anymore?"

He nods quietly and opens his hands to her, as if questioning.

_"Yes. I'm sorry that was so painful. I hadn't the chance yet to closely study how badly broken your leg was. Restoring it to original condition was a…rather involved process. If it hadn't been so cold, you'd have felt all the bones moving and wiggling and….just…eh. For the unpleasantness, mi dispiace. If you'll give me your leg back, I'll remove the cast also."_

Bella thinks a moment and then sticks her leg out, the pain completely and utterly _gone_. The cast seemed little more than dead weight now.

_No. I won't take the apologies. Thank you. Thank you very much._

The stranger glances at her briefly, something off in his glittering gaze. He never says anything though; he very quietly takes a razortipped finger that had been normal, albeit glowing, and runs a seam down the back of the cast and up the bottom of her foot to the toe. The razortip vanishes as quickly as it came and nimble, deft fingers lift the cast off with the faintest of effort, the material cracking gently as he pulls it apart.

Bella's pale foot falls free and she immediately sets her toes wiggling, stretching long-disused muscles.

Before she can say anything, that razortipped finger appears again and he quickly slices the drawing Edward had put on the cast free. Lifting the brittle papery substance up, he claps if flat between both palms.

His eyes flash blindingly and little arcs of electricity crackle around his hands.

As sharply as it started, it stops.

His eyes dim to "normal" again and he holds the little card-shaped piece of cast out to her. Furrowing her brow and biting her lip, Bella takes it and looks at it closely. What she saw made her gasp. The material had become hard and thickened a bit, becoming something that felt like a piece of polished stone, cool to the touch. All the colors within the drawing, even the black, shimmered and pulsed with an energy that looked suspiciously like the electricity that had played about the stranger's fingers an instant ago.

Looking up with wide eyes, tears of a different sort welling in them, Bella struggles to find _anything_ to say to him.

He just smiles and waves her off, pointing at the door.

"_Carlisle will be coming through that door in less than a minute. I have to go."_

Bella gives him a _WHAT THE FUCK_ look, "How the hell do I explain this?" She points at her foot, which she was wiggling about.

_"Wing it. Deflect. Evade. Tell them Sasquatch __**is**__ real and he's a like a big, hairy druid or something. In my experience, the more insane the story is at first glance, the less questions are asked when the person asking is more concerned about your safety in general than they are __**how**__ you got safe."_

Bella frowns at him and just thinks at him, for speed's sake.

_Great. I can't tell them about you?_

He shrugs and gets a _ooh, touchy subject_ look.

_"Actually, you physically can't. Part of the rules I'm bound to is that the mortals I come into personal contact with either have to come live in my world or have a physical compulsion embedded that keeps them from speaking about the specifics of our contact. Or…they have to be killed."_

Bella goes wide-eyed.

_And I don't fit the first choice or the last, right?_

He simply smiles and nods.

She starts to ask him his name _again_ but the doorknob turns and she glances over quickly.

Carlisle swings the door open and steps into the room. He goes wide-eyed as he locks gazes with Bella. Then his eyes drift to the sliding door across the room and go even wider. Bella gets a funny look and looks over.

She gasps when she sees what he does.

Traced on the door in glass-fog was an intricate drawing of an ornate gothic cross, slowly fading into invisibility.

"Bella?"

Bella blushes and turns to face her boyfriend's father.

"Um…hi, Dr. Cullen."

The doctor was standing at the edge of the bed, arms crossed over his chest, looking down at her leg and the discarded cast. Bella cupped the energetic little stone disk the stranger'd given her in her palm, out of sight, and tries to figure out how she was gonna talk her way out of this one.

_Awesome. Get kidnapped, then re-kidnapped, and dropped off in your boyfriend's bed. And the first person I get to talk to is his DAD._

The now-familiar whisper slithers across her synapses again, tittering with amusement.

"_You'll do fine, little birdy. And you can call me Z."_

Bella manages to keep the smirk off her face and instead gives Carlisle her best shitty salesman grin and takes a deep breath, prepping to do her best at Professional Bullshitting.

_Yeah…and if you buy this, can I interest you in a lovely beachfront estate in New Mexico?_


	4. Chapter 3

Edward Cullen and Jasper Whitlock drove in silence.

Well, almost silence.

Edward's phone had gone off at least 15 times in the last 30 minutes. He'd repeatedly smacked the silence button with his thumb every time, going immediately back to staring out the window into the woods outside of town.

Jasper breaks the road-silence.

"Dude, seriously, you gotta answer that thing sometime."

Edward glances at him and tries to hide a frown. He mumbles.

"It's my fuckin' dad, man. I don't wanna fucking talk to him right now."

Jasper smirks and glances sidelong at him.

"Aw, come on, man. You gotta tell him something. I mean…Bella just got snatched up and you two have been all lovey-dovey for weeks now. It doesn't exactly take godlike intellect to make the connection that you two are dating or that you'll _obviously_ go looking for her. And given the events of late; the cops are already looking at La Push, isn't it basically obvious where Bella will turn up in the end? Whatever weird ritual or crazy shit they have to do, they _have_ to do it there. Sacred ground and all that bullshit," Jasper pauses to take a breath and Edward cuts in.

"_Jesus,_ fuck_, _dude! Is this what you do when you aren't fucking talking? Do you overanalyze _everything_?"

Jasper laugh and nods, "Well, yeah, of course. It's called powers of observation, friend. For one to be ninja, one must always know his environment and circumstances at all times." The last is said in a fey-Asian accent.

Edward covers his mouth with his hand and looks out the window, trying not to laugh at Jasper.

Jasper doesn't miss a beat though.

"As I was sayin' though, you _have_ to tell your dad something. What if he calls the cops and tells them to start combing the area around La Push for you? I mean…seriously, dude…we're driving into a shitstorm here. I'm glad I know some nifty backroads. But still…we're at least 2 hours from really getting close enough to the heart of the Rez to really see what is going on. And there is no telling how long we'll be once we get out there. We could be looking for hours, trying to find her even _if_ your friend Leah can help. Speaking of her…do you really trust her?"

The abrupt question caught Edward off-guard. He sat up and looked thoughtful a moment. He actually stopped and really questioned it.

Did he?

He wasn't really sure.

That he was questioning it in the first place struck him as a bad sign and he took that into account. Given her proximity to the Rez and the people on it, she was a wonderful potential spy.

But…

Mutts though they were, the people out there weren't stupid; they'd have noticed that she was the _only_ person he'd gotten along with even a little bit for the short time he'd gone to school out there. _That_ made her a serious potential liability when it came to putting the lives of his best friend and his girlfriend on the line. His own seemed a bit secondary to theirs but he figured that was just one more indication that maybe he really _did _have a heart under the old douchebag exterior.

_Hm…guess that answers that fuckin' question._

He looks at Jasper resolutely.

"No. I don't. Not as far as I can fucking throw her. And certainly not if the odds are the lives of people I love. Why do you ask?"

Jasper flashes a dark smile at him.

"Just wondering _how_ ninja tonight's run has to be."

Edward nods and looks out the window.

They continue on in road-silence, the big off-road tires of Jasper's Jeep humming on the pavement. About 10 minutes later, the Jeep slows and pulls off the road onto a dirt track. Gears click audibly a few times as Jasper puts the vehicle in 4 wheel drive.

The Jeep rockets down the mud-packed trail.

A few moments later, the Jeep slides nimbly around a curve in the track and accelerates out hard, darting toward the tree-line ahead.

Edward fights down the urge to sock Jasper's grinning, laughing ass into next week because he doesn't feel like having the Jeep roll or someshit. "FUCKING HOLY HELL DUDE! WHAT THE FUCK!" was what he did instead, yelling against the overloud growling of the Jeep's engine.

Jasper doesn't even blink, just keeps grinning.

"Oh, come on, man! You gotta break this fear of cars sometime or I'm gonna start sneaking in and taking your Volvo for joyrides!"

Edward narrows his eyes at him, _death_ in his gaze.

"You motherfucker, you wouldn't. I'll kick your teeth in."

Jasper grins wider, if that's even possible.

"Better believe I would! That's a badass ride, homie."

Suddenly, Jasper slams both feet to the floor, clutching in and stomping the breaks. He snatches it out of gear and whips up on the emergency break, turning the wheel faintly to slide sideways into a hard stop without flipping the Jeep.

A spray of gravel flies into the air, peppering the hooded stranger that had just stepped out into the middle of the track.

Well, it should have peppered him anyway.

It instead just passed _through _him as if he wasn't there.

Jasper and Edward glance at each other and then back out at the stranger. Black hoodie, black cargo pants, booted feet, and gloved hands. Only distinguishable features on him were a faint stubble of white beard and two dangerous eyes glittering from the shadows of the hood.

A deep baritone, strong and resonant, hails them.

"A moment of your time, gentleman."

Again, both young men look at each other and then get out of the Jeep cautiously. As they meet on the driver's side of the 4x4, they wearily regard the newcomer. He was standing just inside the tree-line, like he was blocking them from reaching a certain point.

Jasper was the first to speak, moving a half-step forward.

"You need some help, man?"

Edward's eyes caught a faint flash of steel; a knife hidden in Jasper's right hand. _Where'd that come from?_ Edward took an even shorter step forward, to distract the eye from his friend's lethal surprise.

The hooded visage smiles faintly and spreads his hands in a placating gesture.

"No. I actually really just needed to stop you for about 2 more minutes."

Both men go wide-eyed and tense to start forward. Edward takes a single step forward and lays a restraining hand on Jasper; a bare touch, a brush of the fingers over Jasper's right knuckles.

Something told him this man before them was not someone you could harm with a knife.

"Why? What happens in 2 minutes? Do you know something about Bella?"

The stranger shrugs, his breath puffing out of the hood in the chill.

"In a minute and a half, you'll be receiving a rather important electronic communication. I suggest, sincerely, that you take _very_ seriously what it has to say."

Edward furrows his brow sharply.

"And how the fuck do you know that?"

The hood tilts and a quiet laugh rolls from its shadowy depths.

"Because I arranged for it to happen, _duh._"

At this, both young men look at each other. Edward grabs Jasper's shoulder and pulls him toward the Jeep. As he does so, he pulls his phone from his pocket, heart racing in his chest, fluttering in this completely unpleasant fashion. Jasper looks at him and then back at the stranger.

"What do you think, man?"

Edward shakes his head and stares at the time on the phone, willing it to move faster.

Jasper arches a brow and blinks.

"What? You think he's _for real?_"

Edward snaps at him, wide-eyed.

"Well, I'd like to fucking find out. _Shut up_."

Sighing in exasperation as he stares at the _moving too slow_ digits on his phone's clock, he growls at nothing. "What the _fuck_! Why the fuck won't time move faster?"

The stranger pipes in, sounding thoughtful.

"I don't think I've ever had _that_ problem…"

Both men glance at him with puzzled looks but before either can say anything, the phone buzzes quietly. Edward jumps so bad he almost drops the phone. It bounces in his hands once or twice before he gets ahold of it again. He'd bumped a button and cleared the new text alert from the screen. Clicking urgently at the phone, he digs through to the text message menu and finds one new message sitting in his in box. When he sees who it's from, Edward almost lets out a shout of joy.

_Sparrow_

Clicking it open, he reads it. Then again. And then…one more time.

His hands drop slowly and he looks up at Jasper, then at the stranger. Jasper furrows a brow and snatches the phone, reading it.

_Come home, baby. I love you._

Edward's voice breaks the forest stillness.

"Who are you?"

The strange smiles darkly from inside his hood.

"Well…it's usually bad news when I come to town. And, " he gestures at the darkening sky "the night is still _very_ young yet. But I got the distinct pleasure of having the opportunity to do something pleasant along the way this time. As for my name…ask your girlfriend. She's waiting." The last is said with a grin and a casual wave.

The Jeep's engine roars to life as Jasper cranks it, slamming the door.

Edward sprints around to the other side and yanks open his door. Before he gets in though, the stranger's voice echoes through the forest to his ears.

"Expect a phone call from an unknown number in about 3 hours."

Edward nods at the stranger as he gets in and slams the door, amazed and grateful at the same time that something was going _right_ again today. Even if some crazy guy he wasn't even sure was _really_ a man at all had intervened to make it happen. The lizard brain in the back of his head idly wonders if there will be any strings attached to this "intervention".

Tires light and throw up a wall of dirt as Jasper hauls ass back the way they came.

Jasper glances in the rear-view and gasps.

"Dude, check it!"

Edward spins in his seatbelt and looks out the back window. His reaction was more subdued; he simply went wide-eyed as his suspicions that the guy probably wasn't _really_ human were confirmed.

The hooded stranger was gone.

Hanging in the air where he'd been standing, leftover dirt and rock that sprayed out in the Jeep's wake traced the outline of an ornate gothic cross, suspended in the air above the center of the track. It hangs for the briefest of moments, then falls to the ground, vanishing.

Both men just look at each other for a second.

Edward voices the thought.

"Where the _fuck_ did that guy come from?"


	5. Chapter 4

2 and a half hours later, night had fallen heavily over the quiet little town of Forks and its neighbor, the La Push Reservation. With the darkness came a cold, brisk, and aggressive wind off the Pacific. Microscopic water particulates floated in the air in front of two brightly glowing white-blue eyes.

Zeraphim could see them, no matter how tiny. And he loved rain.

The astral being had spent the last 2 hours forcefully screwing with reality, using his extensive and hyper-attuned senses to find every last person connected to the group here on La Push that he was here to wipe out. He'd found all of them and scattered his awareness to the 4 winds to physically locate them all. Once done, it had been as simple as embedding the proper compulsions in their minds.

He wanted them all in one place.

One didn't plan and execute large-scale murder without proper reason. And reason dictated proper planning. And proper planning said the most efficient way to wipe out a lot of people at once was to have them all standing next to each other.

Especially the two leaders of the pack.

They had clever disguises, those two. Especially the cripple. That one would require an extra bit of attention when the time came. Not that the one hiding in the woman, Bella's mother, was anything to be sneered at. Z expected a few crafty tricks from that one before the end.

Ensuring both of those would be there had been rather simple though.

He'd used a bit of "old school" demon-hunting. The creatures he was hunting were made of the same type of extra-planar material as demons and similar extra-dimensional beings and so could be drawn to and bound by an engraving of their true names. Getting _those_ was so disgustingly easy, he'd felt dirty for doing it. Finishing up had been acquiring a couple of fist-sized emeralds with two different, but equally spidery, symbols carved into their faces. These were left under the stage in the building he sat on top of, the very same building the 100 or so people he'd laid compulsions on were headed to.

The final preparation had been putting every last cop within 20 miles to sleep; roadblocks and observation posts in and out of La Push were all still there, just empty. All the cops were crashed out in their cruisers, lights still going. He supposed he could have embedded a more complex compulsion and made them turn those off too but the more complicated the physical impulse, the more likely to be confused, performed wrong, or shrugged off entirely. Physical compulsions were finicky things.

Now came the only part of the hunt he didn't like: the wait.

He hadn't exactly lied to Edward when he'd said he didn't ever have the problem of time not going by fast enough. He didn't; he could speed time up, slow it down, stop it, even reverse it. All with little more than a thought. The problem was that no matter how much he played with time, it always moved the same speed for _him_.

Gave him entirely too much _time_ to think about things.

Z didn't specifically harbor any serious _desire_ to slaughter a hundred people. But it was part of the reason he was here. His boss had sent him on this run and said only that special care should be applied to the girl, Bella. The only other directive had been to eradicate the source of Im-Balance that was rising out of this sleepy little town.

Z never had a problem killing for the sake of the Balance he was created to maintain.

Nor did he have a problem helping the girl.

It was one of the rare moments of moral dithering Z experienced. A lot of people were going to die tonight, a lot of homes & families destroyed.

But…it was part of the objective.

Balancings were usually such violent things, violent and very _thorough_. All connected parties have to be dealt with. In this case, purged from Existence. Although…he suspected the real source of his hesitation was partially because tonight's massacre was going to be _boring_. Killing beings that can't defend themselves against him in even the meekest of ways was so insufferably _dull_.

He chuckles quietly at himself, breath a cloud of white in the cold light of his eyes.

_Yep. And I realize again why I don't let people listen to my thoughts._

Dismissing the notion and sitting up on the flat rooftop of the auditorium building he'd picked for the 'event', he scampers like a cat over to the edge of the roof and looks down at the parking lot below. It was slowly filling up, more cars filing into the space as people tried to make the 10pm 'urgent gathering' that he'd gently compelled them to come to.

A foul scent, like that of dirty socks and manure, draws near.

Z's nose wrinkles in disgust. _How do the humans not smell that?_

Two vehicles pull in on opposite ends of the parking lot at the same time. A small white compact on one end and a long-bed pickup on the other. The truck had a modified door on one side. Both vehicles park near each other. Bella's mother, Renee, and a guy named Phil Dywer got out of the car. Jacob Black got out of the truck and ran to the other side, opening the modified door and helping his wheelchair-bound father, Billy Black, out. They meet in the middle of the parking lot and have a hushed discussion about the summons that brought them all out of hiding tonight.

It seems that none of them know _who_ issued it.

Z smirks in the cool darkness. _A couple of simple tricks and nonsense._

The group moves toward the building, the astral being's eyes dimmed in the night as he watches them from the roof. The auras of the two extra-planar creatures hiding within Renee and the elder Black glimmer a bright and angry red-orange in his sight, showing their fury at being forced into the open. The two humans next to them pulse with a cool but uncertain blue-green; they were being led by the noses by the two next to them and didn't even know it, yet they weren't sure they felt okay about going to this meeting, since no one knew who called it.

The doors close behind them as they enter the building anyway.

Z turns away from the edge and scampers across to the backside of the building toward a pair of luminescent purple eyes sitting in a tree nearby. He calls out to Tien.

"It's set. I'll be done shortly. Go keep an eye on Bella and Edward."

Tien meows in the night, the sound echoing eerily out of the darkness to Z. The two eyes blink shut and the shadowcat vanishes into the blackness. That done, the astral being stands and walks out to the center of the roof. Looking down at the surface he stood on, he could see right through into the auditorium below and watch all the people inside as they mill around to find seats. His two prime targets were making their way backstage to see what the deal was, who had summoned them.

Z takes his hoodie off and bounces on the balls of his feet as he waits. The pale skin on his hyper-toned chest almost glows in the moonlight. He shakes his head and his pony-tail falls free, long white hair cascading down around his face and shoulders. Flexing strong hands, glittering purple-blue razors cut the air as they pass through it, leaving faint tracers glowing in their wake.

The two make their way to the stage, along with the younger Black and Dywer.

It was _finally_ time.

Zeraphim's eyes explode into blinding brilliance and the surface he stands on ripples like water for a split-second before the astral being falls in, the concrete rooftop splashing in a most unstone-like manner. Passing through building material as if it wasn't even there, Z drops through the ceiling of the auditorium with his hands above his head, claws leaving a glowing trail behind.

The two body-thieves on stage notice him a blink before anyone else and have just enough time to lock eyes with the astral being. As soon as they do, he flashes a fanged grin at them and his eyes flash.

_BOOM_

Z slams into the floor, his hands punching into the ground on impact.

A wave of force whips out from his touch and throws everything on the floor that isn't bolted to it upward violently. All 100 some odd people in the room are lifted off their feet and sent tumbling ass-over-teakettle into the air.

All except for the two body-thieves.

Z stands from his crouch and whispers a single word.

"Stop."

Everything halts.

People tumbling and screaming are suddenly still and silent, faces locked in expressions of terror. Keys, phones, makeup, the odd pistol, and other bits of assorted junk hover in suspended animation, in the middle of flying out of the purses attached to the women in the room.

All except the body-thieves again.

They were staring at the astral being with wide, terror-filled but angry eyes.

As Z pads silently down the center aisle toward the stage, the light of his eyes brightens the dark auditorium faintly and glints off the objects hung in the air. The ghost of a smirk crosses his face as he listens to their frenzied mindspeak.

"_It knows what we are!"_

"_How can it? We're still disguised!"_

"_It singled us out TWICE with magical attacks! It's stopped time completely! You don't think it's powerful enough to see through these flimsy masks?"_

Zeraphim's voice explodes across the auditorium, the whispering multitude of voices seeming to crawl from the superb acoustic panels on the walls. The very concrete and steel the building's made of thrums and vibrates with the growling, guttural undertone.

"_You need not worry so much about it. I do know exactly what you are. And I'm here to put an end to it. Have you anything to say for yourselves before we begin?"_

The woman's voice rings across the room, a voice that sounds as if it was pretty once but is now stained dark and raspy by the presence within the body.

"You won't stop us." The eyes of the woman were a dark hollow black, no longer the serene blue-green they should have been.

Z snorts and laughs quietly as he makes his way up the stage, the whispering sound of his amusement echoing off the walls.

"_Oh, I don't know about that. You two need followers to have any kind of power within this shade of reality. And...well, your followers are in for the same treatment you two are about to get."_

Renee walks forward to meet Z and stops, empty black eyes drilling into his glowing white-blue ones. "And what sort of treatment is that going to be?"

Z flashes that too-perfect smile at her, fangs glittering in the lights over the stage.

"_Rough. Final, even."_

Renee smiles up at Z, the presence inside her using her face to give Z her best _Come hither_ look as she places her hands on her hips.

"Oh really?"

Z knew the trick though.

Even as Renee ducks and dives to the side, Billy Black lunges at Z.

Z simply ducks as well and catches the cripple's outstretched arms. Rolling backward, his feet kick upward into Black's stomach as he lets him go.

Black sails off the stage and into the auditorium.

He lands back-first on the back of one of the seats, a dull _snap _telling of a shattering spine.

The presence within refuses to cry out or relent to the broken pieces of body it resides within. Hopping to its feet, it screeches in this dissonant and ear-splitting manner as it leaps up toward the stage at the astral being.

The astral being wasn't there anymore though.

Even before the creature had dragged his broken-backed vessel to its feet and leaped, Z was already waiting to spring. As it jumped, Z leapt and aimed a bit high, like he was trying to jump _over_ his attacker.

He was.

The body-thief passes directly under Z in mid-leap.

Razortipped fingers lance out and shred the skin from the man's back. The wispy, ethereal form of the creature within glimmers in Z's eyes and he grabs a big handful. As his jump carries him past Black, he drags the extra-planar being out.

Black's eyes clear and his mind reasserts itself at the worst possible time.

He screams all the way to the stage, slamming into the hard wood with the momentum of the jump his body had just been used for. His face smacks into the floorboards with a _crack_ as his nose shatters.

His former possessor, however, didn't fare nearly as well.

As Black sailed toward the stage, Z slung the creature in hand to the floor and landed on it heavily, crushing it. Its eyes go wide as it looks up at him and croaks in a raspy voice, "How can you…see us? Hurt us? We exist on a different level of reality."

Z laughs and speaks to it vocally. If nothing else, just to be insulting.

"I'm a deity-being, genius. I exist on _all_ levels of reality. Hell, I helped _build_ reality."

With that, purple-blue tracers arc through the darkness and shear the creature's head off.

Z stands and turns away, the body and head both igniting into infinitely hot blue starfire and quickly burning to nothing. The astral being dusts his palms off and wipes green-yellow goop from his fingerblades on his pants as he pads down the aisle toward the stage.

Renee, a look a rage and disgust on her twisted face, lifts a screaming, bleeding Billy Black up by his head, his useless feet hanging above the floor.

"GARBAGE! WORTHLESS TRASH!" she screams.

Muscles strain in her thin shoulders and she slams her hands shut. Black's skull crushes inward with a sudden popping _crunch. _Brain leaks through her fingers and she drops the body in contempt. Fingers lift to her mouth and she licks some of the grey matter off before smearing the rest on the dark sweater and jeans she wore.

Z pauses at the front of the stage, glances down at the body of the elder Black, and shakes his head. He locks gazes with the empty-eyed Renee.

"Now was all that really necessary? I was at least gonna make it relatively painless." He gestures to the all the people in the air, hovering over the seats in the auditorium. "They won't even feel it when the time comes."

Renee speaks, her voice totally warped and deformed now, little more than a vaguely feminine growling rasp.

"How nice for them."

Z just shrugs a little, "So…I'm a little disappointed. I really expected him to be the stronger of the two of you." He jerks a thumb at the dying blue flames up the aisle behind him.

She steps forward, looking up at him defiantly.

"Why would a man _ever_ be stronger than a woman?"

Z nods and shrugs again.

"Fair enough. Women are usually meaner in the end."

As the last words leave his mouth, Renee's right fist swings out toward his face, blurry fast.

Z dips at the waist and swings his head beneath the blow. The side of his hand slaps out and snaps the elbow of the offending arm with a mild strike. Renee stumbles forward and flicks her arm, the bone crunching back straight. She whips the arm back at Z again, a backhand this time.

He dips under it _again_, purple-blue tracers arcing out and sending the hand flying off the stage.

Blood sprays both of them as Renee snatches the ruined stump of her wrist to her chest.

Z steps back and flashes a lethal but lazy smile.

"I can hack pieces off that body all day. You wanna finish this or shall we keep playing?"

Renee lets out an otherworldly screech and leaps at Z.

A knee rockets toward his face. Z ducks his head to one side and turns, reaching out and grabbing the ankle of the leg that attacked him. He jerks downward, swinging Renee face-first at the floor. She doesn't submit to abuse so easily though.

Her other foot lashes out and catches Z across the mouth even as Renee's face slaps into the floor with a wet _smack_, her nose breaking.

The astral being lets her go and steps back, popping his jaw back into place. Renee stands and resets her nose with a dull _crunch_. She darts forward and swings a foot at Z's head again. He swings low under her leg and spins, purple-blue tracers tracing _murder_ toward her back as she passes.

Only she wasn't there.

She'd skipped out of the missed kick, intentionally at that, and leapt up onto the time-frozen body of Phil Dywer. Her feet land on his face & chest. Kicking hard off of him, she leaps off to attack Z again.

She'd just killed Phil though.

The force from her feet transferred to his body and immediately went into stasis along with him. The immense force used for her jump would radiate through his skin, muscle, and bone as soon as Z released the time field. Internal bleeding and massive hemorrhaging would occur instantly, to say the very least.

He'd be dead, painfully, before he struck the ground.

Energy has to go _somewhere_.

Renee, though, paid him absolutely no heed whatsoever though. She'd struck Z in mid-air as he leapt at her and was tossed across the auditorium. Sailing through the air, she bounces off a few of the time-frozen bodies and tumbles into the seats with a _thud_. She groans quietly as she lay there, feeling her power start to wane as more of her followers die held frozen in time. Just knowing their lives would end as soon as the being attacking her let them all go was enough to rip their energies from her.

Deciding it's all or nothing, the presence within Renee dissolves her body for an instant and attempts to cross the planar boundary, trying to leave.

An otherworldly wail, tortured and angry, rips across the auditorium as Renee's body rematerializes.

She couldn't leave. She was name-bound to the building. She casts about, looking for the symbol of her true name. She finds it with her extra-planar senses; a huge emerald beneath the stage with her name glowing in its face.

Leaping from the seats, she steps off the top of one and sails through the air toward the stage.

Z slams into her from behind, fists coming down atop her head and sending her tumbling into the seats with a _CRUNCH_. Wood breaks as well as bone. The presence inside Renee senses that her body is dying and dissolves it quickly. If she couldn't leave, she could still teleport around the room. Maybe this fight wasn't over just yet.

The astral being shatters the concrete underneath the carpet as he lands where Renee just was.

_SLAM_

Z's face smashes into the broken concrete, his attacker leaping away immediately.

He blinks rubble-filled eyes, "Ow." Cuts open and bleed blood that sparkles and crackles with an inner energy all its own. The astral being leaps to his feet and flicks his gaze toward the presence attacking him.

Renee was crouched on the ceiling, looking down at him. Blood drips from her nose, eyes, ears, and mouth. Z's last attack had liquefied her skull. She held on with one human hand jammed into the plaster and a green, wispy claw shimmering as it holds to the roof, the emanation sticking out of the ruined stump of her severed wrist.

Z explodes out of the seats, shattered wood flying out in his wake.

The creature within Renee, expecting straight-on assault, dissolves her body again.

Z pauses in mid-air and wipes the blood off his already-healed face, watching the extra-dimensional being as it travels through the local ethers to appear on the floor beneath him. As the being re-materializes rocketing upward out of the carpet, Z was smirking faintly and waiting.

He drifts faintly to the side and the woman shoots past him. One hand lazily reaches out and connects with her face as she passes.

_CRACK_

The woman's attack falters and the body tumbles from the air. It bounces off another time-frozen person and slams into the floor near the far wall of the auditorium. Z scampers across the tops of the chairs and crouches on one, looking down at Renee's body.

The head was fully twisted backward, facing the wall she was leaning against.

Z just waits.

Suddenly, the body jerks and stands shakily, the muscles and nerves not sending impulses properly anymore. With a wet grinding sound, the head twists back around slowly and those hollow, black eyes lock gazes with the astral being.

Z grins.

"Is it time?"

The dead Renee just screams at him, weird rasping voice rattling the walls with the vehemence of the creature's anger.

Z laughs and shrugs.

"Guess so."

The Renee body leaps at him, slower and less precise now as the presence inside is forced to use its own waning power to hold the body alight or even move it at all, the owner dead.

Z floats up and back, keeping the body in front of him. His eyes flash and his hand closes around one of the emeralds he'd left under the stage. With a gentle gesture, he extends his arm and presses the gem to Renee's chest.

The presence within realizes its mistake and screams again, Renee's hollow eyes wide.

Z's voice slithers across the creature's mind.

_"Tal'thin Zir"_

Green fire erupts from the emerald in Z's hand and through the skin of the body before him. Renee's body lights a dull, sickly green from within and creature's wailing suddenly starts fading fast, rapidly becoming a mere echo of its former power as it's sucked in.

Contact with the symbol of her name and having it spoken aloud at the same time snatched the creature down into the gemstone and locked her there.

Bereft the force keeping it afloat, the now-empty and broken body just falls away from Z.

It hits the seats with a _crack_ as it shatters another of the abused chairs.

Z holds the glimmering green rock in his hand for a moment as he looks down at the body. He focuses on her face. In death and finally free of the presence holding her thrall, Renee's eyes had returned to their serene blue-green color.

Taking a deep breath, Z zips over to the stage and alights on it. His eyes flash once and the other emerald appears in his hand, unused. He hadn't needed it after all. The creature's direct assault had left it very open to his tricks for energy manipulation.

Burning it away with starfire had been far easier and more time-efficient.

He sets both of the gemstones on the floorboards, looking down at the one that glimmers and pulses with angry inner light. Pulling a phone out of one pocket, he speed-dials a number.

"Edward."

A pause on the other end.

"Z?"

"So you did ask her about me."

The boy on the other end laughs a bit, "I did. She said she couldn't be very specific and that I'd have to meet you to understand. But…I think I already do a little."

Z smirks, "That's good. Get out to the auditorium at La Push."

"What? Why?"

"I have something here I need to show Bella. It's best she see it in person as opposed to me just telling you over the phone."

"What about the cops? Aren't they still watching the borders of the Rez?"

Z laughs and shakes his head.

"I wouldn't worry about them. Just get out here soonest, ok?"

Edward hesitates for a breath.

"Okay. See you soon."

The line clicks dead and Z tosses the phone over his shoulder, where it vanishes in a shower of blue sparks.

Zeraphim looks down at the emeralds and then around the room at the destroyed seating and blood-stained flooring. Black's shattered skull was little more than a red, soggy mess that had quit leaking awhile ago. Renee's body was twisted at wrong angles, most of her major bones broken. Her severed hand lay just in front of the foremost row of seats on the right side of the theater. And then there was the still 100 or so people frozen in time, hanging suspended in mid-air. At least 10 of them were dead as soon as Z released the time field. And their deaths wouldn't be as painless as he preferred.

He ponders what to do with them for a moment and then shrugs, heading off the stage and making for the doors leading out.

"Fuck that. I'll figure it out in a minute."

He props against the wall in the cold, pulling a pack of smokes from one pocket and lighting it with a Zippo that vanishes in another spray of sparkling energy. Leaning his head on the wall and enjoying the cool air on his bare chest, he takes a drag off the smoke and waits.


	6. Chapter 5

Edward clicks the phone off and looks at his girlfriend.

_God, I'm so happy to have her back. Who the __**fuck**__ is this guy?_

She notes his pause and quirks a brow at him.

"What? Are we leaving?"

Edward smiles uncertainly and nods.

"Yeah. He wants us out at the auditorium on La Push. I dunno what the fuck for though."

Bella furrows a brow.

"What did he say?"

Edward matches her expression.

"He said he had something to show you that's better seen in person."

Bella just nods. Edward looks at her for a moment then stands up, walking over to his dresser and opening the top drawer. Keys rattle as he scoops up his key-ring and shoves it in the pocket of his jeans. Bella looks at him wide-eyed.

"Are you going to _drive_?"

Edward shrugs with a look on his face that says _I hope so_ as he walks over to her and offers her a hand. His eyes cast about the room, looking for her crutches. She grabs his hand and hops to her feet. Edward blinks as she is suddenly standing and in his face. Leaning back, he glances down at her so recently shattered leg.

"Hm. Gonna take me a fucking minute to get used to that."

Bella laughs and tugs his hand, making for the door. He smiles at the sound of her laughter and lets himself be led.

Five minutes later, they were sitting in the front seats of his car. Edward was white-knuckled on the steering wheel and staring into the floorboard of the car, taking deep breaths. Bella was looking at him with a pained expression. Her hand was resting on his shoulder.

Breaking the silence inside the car, Bella sighs softly.

"It's ok, Edward. My leg is fine. I'm right here with you. And best of all…_I love you_."

Edward glances up at her, looking right into her warm smile and beautiful eyes. He pauses for just a moment and looks at her hand on his shoul- der. Then at her leg, amazed still that she was walking around and fine. He finally smiles back at her and nods.

"Ok. Thank you, Sparrow. I love you too."

With that, the key slides smoothly into the ignition and turns, the long-disused engine kicking over on the first try. The warm, rich sound of the Volvo's finely crafted and meticulously tuned motor vibrates the inside of the car softly.

Edward closes his eyes, taken briefly back to a time when he'd loved his car.

He'd begun to hate it as the instrument of his Sparrow's crippling.

Now that she was up and walking around, that seemed a little silly the more he thought about it.

His eyes open and he smiles warmly, looking down at the dash and the numbers arrayed on it. A thumb taps the _play_ button on his CD player and the 6 disc changer works quietly, the quiet intro to Psycroptic's "Initiate" starting as he clutches in and shifts into reverse. Brake lights flare as he waits for the garage door to open. He glances over at Bella, a grin creeping onto his face.

"You ready to go for a ride, Sparrow?"

She gets a wide-eyed happy face and nods, buckling her seatbelt.

Edward just grins and nods.

The song blasts into full-speed and tires chirp as Edward rockets out of the garage. Blue-tinted headlights flash in the forest surrounding the Cullen residence as the front end swings around and points outward. Gears click briefly and tires scream again.

The Volvo tears down the road leading into town, the music echoing through the forest from open windows.

15 short and broken speed limit-filled minutes later and Edward was slowing down, cautiously approaching the police roadblock heading into La Push. The lights were going but there was no one in sight. No cops waving cars through with their flashlights, no crazy redheads handcuffed against the back of a cruiser.

Nothing. Just flashing lights and empty road.

Edward glances at Bella with a furrowed brow.

Who just shrugs.

"What did he say about the cops when you asked?"

Edward just shrugs back.

"He didn't say shit! Just said I shouldn't worry about them."

Bella looks thoughtful a moment and nods.

"Then I wouldn't worry about them. Just go."

Edward tilts his head at her and then looks out the windows as they creep up to the roadblock. No one came running out the stop them or shoot them or anything dreadful like that.

Narrowing his eyes as they creep through the roadblock, Edward makes out one of the cops inside his cruiser.

He was fast asleep!

Bella had noticed too and looked at him about the same time he turned to face her.

"How did….?"

Bella laughs and shrugs, "Who knows? If Z says not to worry about something, I'll take it at face value. Just go."

Edward furrows a brow again and shakes his head, speaking as he presses the gas down and takes off. "So when are you going to tell me what the fuck happened this afternoon?"

Annoyance flashes across Bella's features.

"I already told you everything I can. I physically _can't_ be any more specific about him."

Edward makes a _hmph_ face and keeps driving.

Bella furrows her brow at him again.

"What? He'll explain it, I'm sure. I got the impression he was planning to explain everything to me at some point anyway."

Edward just nods.

"Alright, ok. I'll stop."

The rest of the drive passes to the sound of Psycroptic's album (_Ob)Servant_ and car noise. About 10 minutes later, they pull into the packed parking lot of the auditorium at La Push. Edward cruises around to the front of the lot and up to the doors.

Seated next to the doors Indian-style was who _had_ to be Z.

Long white hair hung past his shoulders, stained red with blood. The impossibly pale skin of his chest looked like it had been sprayed with gore. His hands were a bloody mess as well but he smoked a cigarette like he didn't care. His eyes were what drew the most attention from Edward's mind.

They glowed this blindingly bright white-blue. They lit up the entryway and the light glinted off the silver finish on Edward's car.

Edward glances over at Bella.

"Is that him?"

Bella, wide-eyed at the blood, nods silently.

Edward parks the car where they sit and kills the engine. He looks at Bella again, drawing his eyes away from the enigmatic creature at the doors.

"Well, he definitely didn't fucking look like _that_ the last time I saw him.

Bella nods again, absently.

"I've seen him look that way…but not with all the blood. I wonder what he did…"

Edward nods and opens the door, stepping out of the car. Bella follows suit and scampers around to grab his hand. They both approach Z warily.

The astral being rises smoothly from his ankles, standing and flicking the cigarette with fingertips glowing a faint purple-blue in the relative darkness under the entryway. His baritone rumbles out of the shadows at them as they approach.

"I'd ask what took so long but you had to drive here so I understand."

Edward furrows a brow and Bella giggles quietly at his side. He glances down at her and then back at Z. "Fuck's that supposed to mean? I drive too fucking slow for your taste?"

Z grins at him and shakes his head.

"Not at all. It's that I move about _so _much faster than a car ever could."

Edward nods, "Hm. So…what the fuck _are_ you anyway? I gather that you aren't fucking human."

Z grins again and motions for them to follow him.

"Not in the slightest. I'll explain inside."

With that, he turns and heads through the double-doors. The couple follows him quietly, pushing through the doors and getting out of the chill night air.

They both stop as soon as they cross the threshold into the waiting area.

Death was in the air. Violent death.

They glance at each other and push forward, heading to the just-closing door and following Z into the main auditorium. Both stop in stunned silence, mouths agape and eyes wide as they take in the insane scene before them.

Bodies, nearly a hundred of them, floated in the air about 12 feet above the seats. Seats that were shattered and broken in many places. Lots of random objects flying from purses and stalled in mid-flight catch the light from the stage. Down the center aisle, near the young couple, the carpet was scorched and burned. A headless body lay on the stage, a veritable river of blood streaking from it across the floorboards to drip off the side.

Bella gasps as she recognizes Jacob Black and Phil Dywer frozen in time above the stage. Her voice finally breaks the vast silence of the room.

"What did you do, Z?"

The astral being turns from looking at something in the ruined seats near the front. He just points at whatever it was he was looking at. His whispering voice bounces off the walls of the room, his mouth never moving.

_"No need to yell; I can hear you fine. You should come and see."_

Bella snaps her mouth closed and bites her lip. Edward furrows a brow and starts down the aisle, his girlfriend a weary step behind. Reaching the astral being's side, they both look. Bella lets out a quiet cry and buries her face in Edward's arm.

All Edward can do is say "_Fuck_."

Before them was the ruined wreckage of Bella's mother, Renee. Her face was a mask of blood, arms and legs cast out at funky angles. The impact had flattened a few chairs beneath the body but not all. A ruined stump of wrist stuck out, blood dried and crusted on the skin, and her head was cocked at a strange angle against one of the remaining intact seats.

Serene, placid blue-green eyes peered sightlessly at them.

Edward looks at Z, who was staring at Bella as if awaiting her reaction past tears.

"Why?"

The astral being turns those strange glowing eyes at Edward, his baritone rumbling softly.

"Hm. Two birds with one stone, so to speak."

With that, he turns and leaps easily up to the stage. Edward's eyes go wide a moment and then he pulls Bella's face up to calm her. She locks eyes with him and then glances at the body for a moment.

Then her eyes narrow, betraying morbid curiosity.

She looks closer. Climbs over the broken woodwork and gets close to the body. She seemed to be studying the corpse's eyes. After a moment of tense silence, she looks up at Z on the stage.

"Was she possessed?"

Z looks up from the headless body onstage and smiles brightly at the young girl.

"You're quick on the upkeep, Bella. Admirable. Yes…she was. Although not by the typical demons the people of your world would imagine."

Bella nods and stands, taking Edward's hand and leading him toward the stage. When they reach it, she steps forward and looks down at the body Z was examining. The back of the corpse was torn open and the remains of the head looked remarkably similar to hamburger meat. Then the girl notices the abnormally thin legs and looks up at Z again.

"Billy Black. Was he possessed too?"

Z nods. "A couple of extra-dimensional beings had taken control of their bodies. From the information I gathered today, they were slowly brainwashing as many as they could to create a situation where they could continue feeding on human blood and purified pain. They drew a large portion of their strength from both that _and_ the will of the believers they 'converted' to their cause. Why that was an issue to me is that the Balance between your town of Forks and this Reservation was being severely upset by these beings' actions. People screwing with my Balance pisses me off."

Bella just nods. Edward goes wide-eyed as he tries to wrap his brain around how crazy that all sounds. Bella was quicker on the next question though.

"So….why my mother? And why couldn't you have just…I dunno…removed the creature or something?"

Z shakes his head and gestures out at the people still time-frozen.

"Why I couldn't just release her is the very same reason I can't let any of these unfortunates go. The creatures have fed on every last one of them; they all bear the beings' taint. Even had I simply stripped the creature from your mother, if it didn't kill her in the process, it likely would have shattered her mind. To say nothing of the effect the creature's taint would have had; she would have never been your mother again, Bella. I'm sorry." He pauses and turns to face the girl, "I don't know why your mother was picked. I haven't been here long enough to have pieced _all_ of their motives together and since they're now dead…while not impossible, it's difficult to interrogate dead things." This last is said with a helpless shrug and an _Oops_ expression.

Bella sighs softly and looks down at Black's ruined corpse and then out into the seats at Renee's body. Her eyes roam across the time-frozen bodies spread across the auditorium.

"So what are you gonna do with them?"

A dark smile crosses the astral being's features, the fangs glistening faintly.

"I had actually decided to let _you _make that call."

Bella starts to quip back but stops.

The enormity of that hit her like a ton of bricks.

Her mind reeled, plunging her back through the last couple of months of constant terror, the knowledge that her psychopath mother was out to mutilate and brainwash her. And always afraid that Renee was around the next corner. She supposed she should feel bad for Dywer and Jacob but couldn't drum up the urge to give a sweet shit; they'd _both_ been there the night her mother sliced her arms to ribbons, leaving her with scars that would _never_ heal. She also supposed she should feel bad about all the families that were about to be wiped from the face of the planet, looking out at the time-frozen people.

But she didn't.

Each and every one of them had submitted to their path willingly. And if not willingly in the beginning, they were certainly willing enough in the end. Willing enough that they'd committed themselves to the insanity these creatures had been spreading and helped bring more 'converts' into the fold, dooming ever more people to the hell these monsters had in store for them.

Bella stopped wondering about it and looks up at Edward, a question in her eyes.

His eyes narrow faintly and a dark look crosses his face.

"Fuck 'em." was his answer.

She nods and looks at the silent astral being.

"Burn it all down."

The dark smile returns to Z's face and he nods once, the fanged grin peeking out again.

"I like the way you think."

At that, Z leans down and scoops up the two fist-sized emeralds that sat on the stage. He gestures for them to move toward the back as he bounces the gemstones up and down in his palms. As the trio pads quietly up the aisle, Bella keeps glancing over her shoulder at the rocks, a question on her face. She never asks it though, knowing Z will answer when he feels like it.

As they reach the double doors to the foyer, he does just that.

"One of these contains the creature that held your mother in thrall. The other turned out to be unnecessary." The astral being pauses and turns to look out at the carnage he'd wrought. He sighs gently before continuing. "And…I suppose I should answer the questions both of you have asked me today."

Bella and Edward both turn and look at him, noting the suddenly tired tone to his voice.

"At the beginning of everything, when the Creator blasted Existence into being, he also created me. I was built for two purposes; to maintain Existence and the Balance required for its continuance. And also for the Creator's personal amusement." This last is said with a faint smirk.

Edward furrows a brow and tilts his head at Z.

"So….you're like a fucking god or someshit?"

Z does this quirky crooked smile.

"Yeah, something like that. I don't particularly care for that term but that's as good a way as any to relate it, I suppose."

Edward smirks, "Oh? Then what term do you prefer?"

Z laughs a bit.

"Well…if Existence had a personality, feelings, and a body…it'd be me. In fact, it _is_ me. So…the Will of Existence seem an apt description."

Edward and Bella both chuckle a bit and nod. Then Bella points the time-frozen bodies.

"Do you have to actively hold them like that?"

Z looks up at them, nodding.

"Time certainly doesn't hold itself still."

"So…this whole time, you've been holding all these people airborne and frozen?"

Z nods again.

Bella goes wide-eyed for a moment.

"No wonder you suddenly sound tired."

The astral being laughs.

"Yep. Now…let's get this party started."

With that, he gestures for them to stand against the doors. A gemstone is placed in each hand and he steps away from them. Turning, he faces the stage and both arms cock back. Snapping forward, the emeralds are launched through the auditorium. Light glitters off their multi-faceted surfaces, sparkling patterns brushing the walls briefly as the gems tumble through the air. The way Z tossed them had their paths crossing near the front of the room.

The emeralds slam into one another and explode into brilliant white-orange flame.

An otherworldly scream echoes hollowly across the vast room, fading almost as quickly as it came. Suddenly, the quickly expanding wall of flame halts its outward rush, halted in time like the people it was set to consume.

Z turns and looks at them both.

"It's probably best that you two head home now. I'll see to this."

Bella skips forward and lifts onto her toes, kissing the astral being's cheek lightly.

"Thank you. _So_ much."

He smiles faintly, minus the fangs, and nods.

"Glad to help."

Edward steps forward, a hand extended. Z glances at his blood-stained palm and shrugs with a faint smirk. They shake hands briefly.

"Thanks for bringing my girl back. Thanks for…ending this."

The smile never left Z's face.

"Don't waste it. And you're both _very_ welcome. I had fun." The last is said with a grin and a wink.

The young couple laughs and turns away, the astral being stepping forward and swinging the double doors shut behind them as they walk out.

Abruptly, the doors open again and Z's head pokes out, an expression _Almost forgot _on his face.

"Oh. One last detail."

The couple turns to face him, quizzical expressions on them both.

"As soon as I leave here, the compulsion that prevents you from talking about me will slowly wipe your very memories of me from your minds. My face, my name, my many voices…all will fade _very _quickly. You'll likely never forget the things you've seen today or the feelings left over from them. But…you will not remember me. And so…goodbye." This last is said with a smile that almost appears sad.

His face vanishes as the doors close again.

A blast and a wave of heat slams into other side of the doors almost immediately, causing them both to step back in faint alarm. A few screams start but are cut off abruptly. Sudden, intense heat boils the paint on the near-side of the door.

The couple turns quickly, heading with strong stride outside to the car. They both hop in, the engine purrs to life, and the Volvo tears out of the parking lot.


	7. Epilogue

Light-bars atop police cruisers and fire-trucks strobe and flash in the early morning darkness. A massive set of explosions had rocked the La Push Reservation about 4am, the few residents still left in town waking and calling emergency services quickly.

Nothing could quite prepare the first responders for the carnage they found.

The parking lot and auditorium were both ablaze.

Flames rose from nearly a hundred vehicles parked there, the asphalt growing soft and the rubber of tires popping and boiling in the heat. Brighter, hotter white-orange flames roared from out of the front doors of the building.

The firefighters had little choice but to simply let it burn. It was so hot, they couldn't get near enough to start battling the flames.

Not that they hadn't tried.

The water sprayed at the fire simply evaporated before it struck the building or cars. The spray foam melted as it was thrown out at the blaze. The firefighters were all awestruck; it took heat that was virtually impossible to create outside of a controlled environment to melt their firefoam.

So they all just sat and watched, smoking cigarettes and chatting while the fire burned itself out.

They weren't the only ones smoking cancer-sticks though.

A hooded stranger stood off in the woods near the backside of the auditorium, hidden from easy sight by a tree trunk. Flames glittered off the keen blue eyes hidden beneath his hood. The wires of headphones ran down his front to one of his pockets. He hummed a tune softly, the melody to Hollywood Undead's "City".

"Let's watch it burn…"

Smiling darkly as he flicks the cigarette, the stranger turns away and pads silently off into the forest, vanishing around the trunk of another tree. A breath later, a single star twinkling high above the conflagration in the parking lot flashes brightly. Thunder rumbles across the early morning half-light and one of the cops points at the star, commenting on its odd behavior.

The star ceases its twinkling and the cop goes back to watching it all burn away.

* * *

**Terminus

* * *

**

Thanks goes out again to **OCDMess** for an amazing story and some fun inspiration**. **I had an absolute blast writing this and waited til after HBD was finished to post it. Feel free to review or not, cuss out or not, trounce or not.

Barring all else, I hope, simply, that you enjoyed it, Travelers.


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